20/5/06 - Aldeburgh, Suffolk
Confronting silence and solitude - the evening here is without dreams; how can there be dreams in the shadow of a reactor?
Instead there are rocks beneath my feet and the hollow ringing of the wind in the chimney - restless because of this, I go searching for mysteries where the village ends and the coast takes over, where the last vestiges of people are felt in the tapping ropes and masts of moored boats and a vacant, shadowy Martello Tower - after this there is nothing: Oystercatchers call lonely in the reeds and at the mudflat edge; the silver inland tributary holds only silhouettes, memories and ghosts - it is a desolate, pining place; it aches for a different history - instead it has the mark of secret Cold War experiments, air that once invisibly exploded and that crackles still with residue and sonic artifacts; a place of no return - where the remains of bombers shot down in the war just tip the surface of the water at low tide - out at sea the forlorn lights of merchants in the shipping lanes and a pale, red beacon - all else is close to emptiness - is that the mystery I find? An odd nirvana; a living sea worn void?
In the upper reaches of the beach, close to the high tide wall, I find a message still in its bottle; it says:
'We were clever lighthouse keepers; we watched over words before the war began. Sour in the rain we still upheld the traditions of discovery out here alone; protecting grace from what is rotten within. May you do the same.'
Confronting silence and solitude - the evening here is without dreams; how can there be dreams in the shadow of a reactor?
Instead there are rocks beneath my feet and the hollow ringing of the wind in the chimney - restless because of this, I go searching for mysteries where the village ends and the coast takes over, where the last vestiges of people are felt in the tapping ropes and masts of moored boats and a vacant, shadowy Martello Tower - after this there is nothing: Oystercatchers call lonely in the reeds and at the mudflat edge; the silver inland tributary holds only silhouettes, memories and ghosts - it is a desolate, pining place; it aches for a different history - instead it has the mark of secret Cold War experiments, air that once invisibly exploded and that crackles still with residue and sonic artifacts; a place of no return - where the remains of bombers shot down in the war just tip the surface of the water at low tide - out at sea the forlorn lights of merchants in the shipping lanes and a pale, red beacon - all else is close to emptiness - is that the mystery I find? An odd nirvana; a living sea worn void?
In the upper reaches of the beach, close to the high tide wall, I find a message still in its bottle; it says:
'We were clever lighthouse keepers; we watched over words before the war began. Sour in the rain we still upheld the traditions of discovery out here alone; protecting grace from what is rotten within. May you do the same.'
There was no signature.
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